FIGURE 1.
Shoes worn once [with collapse intuited]. (A) Heel [2.5 inches, wooden, faux]. I’d never fallen—on a stage, on a sidewalk, in a bad relationship—never. Not a single heartbreak. Sneakers & sandals, tomboy wanderer. Method: stay low to the ground. [the break would wait] plus: (B) Toes [absent]. Bent from too small shoes from too small budgets from a too long childhood. (C) & here one must step outside the figure. & here one must leap [dream signs, dream visions, & so forth]. Full grown, I landed in Houston & shopped with a man [not shown]. You look so different, I said to him. There was blue between us. Those shoes? he asked when I lifted them. Yes, I said & slipped them on [yes to their blue dusk straps, yes to the box, to the bag, & yes to figuring where to wear them].
FIGURE 2.
April. The space where one —. [& is led]. Intuit, intuit, intuit. She fell, they answered when I asked what happened. & one week later into the grove she went while I stood in these shoes [these shoes].
from Hemming the Water © 2013 by Yona Harvey. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.